Bon Appetit Moving to NYC, But Why Was It Ever in LA?

The shocking Monday news for the food media world is that Bon Appétit is moving from LA to New York, and is losing Editor-in-Chief Barbara Fairchild in the process. It wasn't clear from the press release whether Fairchild, who started at the publication in the 1970s as an editorial assistant, was moving on voluntarily or not. Could her departure be due to the magazine's "floundering digital strategy," as Eater National has posited?

When Gourmet was around, it and Bon App had sort of a strange Internet strategy, whereby both magazines had their own websites but also shared content with Epicurious.com (also owned by Condé Nast). So, in effect, they were all competing with themselves online. Now Gourmet is dead of course, but Bon App still has that sharing arrangement. It reportedly has yet to release an iPad/iPhone app that was slated for July. Meanwhile, Epicurious's app is incredibly popular, available on both iPhone and Android platforms, and won a National Magazine Award earlier this year.

What this means for the rest of the talented Bon App LA staffers in their cool midcentury-modern LA homes is still unknown. But we did figure out the answer to one thing we were wondering: Why was Bon Appétit located in LA to begin with? Apparently it was formerly owned by LA-based Knapp Communications, which also owned Architectural Digest. Knapp sold both publications to the NY-based Condé Nast in 1993. As a California media person, I have to end on a whiny note: Must there be only a handful of great national magazines located west of the Mississippi? It is so depressing.